A holographic metasurface antenna (HMA) can include thousands of individual tuning elements, such as varactors. The correct behavior of each tuning elements is typically verified during the manufacturing process of the HMA. However, once the HMA is installed in a real-world environment, individual tuning element behavior can degrade for a variety of reasons. For example, these reasons can include one or more of ambient temperature changes, mechanical damage to the HMA, manufacturing anomalies, or bird strike on the surface of the HMA can cause incorrect behavior of one or more scanning elements. Although it is possible to easily measure the overall RF characteristics of an HMA by turning all of it's scattering elements of and on, a characteristic of an individual scattering element is generally more difficult to measure.
Additionally, in a real-world installation of an HMA it can be too costly or impractical to employ additional hardware located a minimum distance away to physically test the individual behavior of each scattering element. Thus, the various difficulties in detecting abnormal behavior of each scattering element for one or more installed HMAs, has created an opportunity for a solution that can be operated remotely and does not require additional hardware separately located from the HMAs.